Picking Sides
by Feonyx
Summary: A shaman and a paladin duel in the Plaguelands, attract the attention of the Scourge, and get into introspective moral debates about loyalty and where it comes from. Don't worry, there's way more Frost Shock than philosophy.


**Picking Sides**

_An Exercise In Wondering What In Blazes You Really Stand For_

Dust hung in the forest air, as it had for more than five years, and might do for five centuries, for all anyone knew. The trees were alive, barely, but the ground was dead and the weak winds were only enough to scour it and fill every breeze with grit. Sunlight reflected off them, always fiery orange in this part of the Eastern Kingdoms, hot as a fever. The Plaguelands of Lordaeron were as hostile a land as could be found for hundreds of miles, and on this early morning, they were still and empty. Mostly.

Softly drumming footfalls heralded a ghost wolf's charge out of the dusty nothingness, limping slightly but still maintaining a frantic pace. Any observers would have wondered what could terrify any shaman into panicked flight, but the shining hammer of wrath that hurtled after it was a hint. A sudden halt, falling flat to the earth, and a good deal of luck let the ethereal hammer twirl over the shaman's head to explode into nothing against a tree

The paladin who had thrown the blessed weapon arrived moments later, her eyes searching for any sign of her foe, but with a head start, the shaman had put his surrounding to good use and found a hiding spot. She cursed under her breath; shamanic healing would quickly annul the upper hand she had gained in their battle, before the coward had turned wolfish and fled.

All was not lost for the holy warrior; healing was one thing, but if the shaman wanted to regain lost magical power, he would need to invoke a water totem, and totems had a tendency away from subtlety. So the paladin stowed her mace in its mageweave bag – a sack as much bigger on the inside than the outside as anyone should expect from cloth called 'mageweave' – in exchange for lighter equipment, and began creeping from tree to tree, as quietly as possible.

The sunlit dust was especially thick that day, its glare making it impossible to see for more than a few feet in any direction; the paladin could only imagine what it was doing to her usually-radiant blonde hair. No true warrior favoured style over substance, since being stabbed in the back with a very practical dagger was only made worse if it happened while you were admiring your reflection, but there was nothing wrong with looking good while crushing your sworn enemies.

A soft sound seemed deafening in the stillness. She froze, waited for it again… it was deep, the kind of sound that you had to feel through your feet and rippling up your bones, but it was definitely there, a pulsing beacon of magic. Not looking in the totem's direction, she sidled that way, still ducking around upturned boulders and staring through what little foliage there was. Closer, closer… she kept up the show of searching, just in case the hidden shaman could see her, and with cobra speed, spun and put her blazing rapier through the totem.

It flared, and the shine of magic died away, but before the carved wood could crumble completely, she had time to recognise that this was no mana spring. It was a sentry totem. She was being watched from afar, and that made this, very simply, a trap. Again the soft sound in the silence, but this time it was nothing magical, just the impact of a thrown object.

How she hated engineers.

The dynamite's concussive blast made the world spin inside the paladin's head, and although her shield absorbed the brunt of its shockwave, she was still left incapacitated for a few key moments. A jolt of lightning arced out of the dusty oblivion, coursing through her armor painfully, followed by the shaman's frost shock that chilled her to the core – escape was now too slow an option, in the words of her mentor, she would only die tired.

But she did bring up her shield in time to block the swing of the shaman's great axe, which he wielded in a body-cleaving sweep as he dropped out of the tree overhead. Unfazed, he pressed the attack from the other side, but the paladin managed to shield herself from that as well, and even deflected the third, overhead strike, leaving him open to a gutting thrust. He backed away hurriedly from the flaming point of her rapier.

Draenei shaman and Blood Elven paladin faced off in the grit-swept grove.

Each had reason to hate the other, dozens of reasons, libraries of reasons, ancestral and moral and merely opportunistic. The Light-loving Draenei knew that all Blood Knights' powers were channelled to them through the lone, tormented Naaru they held captive, somewhere in their realms. In the figure before her, the Elf saw a man with immense powers open to him, the Light of Creation and all the pure elemental force of the world, yet no sense of how to use it, no risk of wasting or burning away… no hunger… no addiction.

Each muttered curses at the other in languages they would never understand. Occasionally, the lack of properly insulting vulgarity failed her, and the paladin was forced to switch into Orcish, while her foe rhymed off a litany of imprecations in some ancient Eredarian tongue as if it were nothing more than a grocery list. Of all the reasons to hate the ever-so-mighty Draenei, their bland elitism was a contender for champion.

Provoked exactly as he had hoped, the paladin lashed out with her sword, and the gleam of a seal of righteousness added burning holiness to its already-flaming blade. The shaman twisted to his left, stretching his axe out to the far side of her weapon, and swung the flat of it into her with crushing force. The moment's reprieve let him drop an earthbind totem, followed by another frost shock, and he quick-stepped away to begin chanting.

Another wave of chill through her muscles was slowing enough, but for the paladin, gravity seemed to have gone on a sugar rush, and it felt like iron chains had been flung around every limb. She knew the shaman would finish his lightning before she could stagger even the few paces that separated them, but both effects were magical, and quickly casting the blessing of freedom on herself, she lifted those bonds and rushed ahead.

With a flick of her wrist, she flung an ethereal hammer of justice that knocked the shaman senseless for a few precious seconds. The paladin invoked a seal of command on herself, turning it into a judgment that wracked even a pious Draenei with searing light, its might doubled by the shaman's weakened state. She moved in – for the kill, if luck was with her – and once again noticed that telltale pulse of totemic power. Just behind him, out of sight from afar, and burning brightly. It would take time to charge power; if he had only just placed it…

He hadn't. A second later, the fire nova totem exploded, its shockwave passing the shaman without harm but blowing the elf off her feet. By the time she clambered up again, her shield hot enough to cook steak to medium-rare, the Draenei had regained his senses. …If that was true, of course, then why in the world was he looking everywhere but at her?

The blast had also blown the air away in all directions, and in this small space it was briefly free of dust, as though an amber fog had been lifted, and the duelling pair discovered they had an audience. Of course, this audience was more likely to eat the salesman than the popcorn, but such was the case with all undead. They were surrounded by Scourge in all directions.

Hatred older than any other in the universe was ignited again, as the Draenei was faced with the same evil that had corrupted so many of his people and driven the last into hiding. Slowly, expecting betrayal at any moment, he turned his back to the Blood Elf and waited for the revenants to attack. She smiled slowly. He wouldn't turn on her in the middle of the battle; no force on Azeroth so resoundingly destroyed undead like a paladin. He needed her if he were to have any chance of escape. Once they had evened the odds slightly, the same would not be true for her. Mockingly assuming the same dignified air, she turned from him as well.

Plague-rotted fiends rushed them in unison, but the first ranks broke when the paladin unleashed a barrage of holy wrath – it passed harmlessly through all natural things to devastate the wretched undead. At her back, she could hear the mighty gales bending around the shaman, lending force and speed to his windfury weapon. It was irrelevant as long as he kept cutting down the hideous things, and she had much more important considerations. The rapier wasn't enough for all these; she swapped it for her warhammer again.

How it was that an animate skeleton could howl and rasp, she didn't know. They coughed out the echoes of battle cries as she crushed them, and it felt good. Better than fighting the Draenei, even. The Scourge came on, dry and dusty or grossly decayed, and one after another she broke them down, or performed a searing exorcism. Skeletal mages appeared, and she tapped their mana to sate her addiction before feeding it back in an arcane torrent, disrupting their every spell.

The shaman wasn't ignoring his temporary ally as they fought. If anything, he paid her more attention than the mindless onslaught. What he saw was increasingly confusing – yes, this was uncontrolled destruction, and yes, their spellcasters could feed her Blood-Elvish magic addiction, but the paladin's fervour was still surprisingly strong.

In fact, what arose while watching her fight was the memory of the great Draenei paladins, heroes whose names had been spoken for centuries. No reasonable person would ever apply the word to a _Sin'dorei_, but there was no helping it: she was righteous. At the back of his mind, the shaman thought of the lone holy Naaru within Tempest Keep, now captured by the once-virtuous Elves. It had to have known it could not hold off a war party led by Kael'thas Sunstrider, so what purpose had there been in remaining?

Naaru are often supremely selfless. Kael might have killed it – a calculated risk – but instead he enslaved it and sent the celestial creature to his people. And a fact about all powerful, foreboding, impenetrable fortresses is that, if you are a prisoner, the owners of said fortress will take you inside _on purpose_. Now they used the Naaru to empower their Blood Knights, bending the Light to their own selfish ends.

Hundreds of them. One day, maybe thousands. All calling on the Holy Light of Creation, letting its power flow through them. Demanding it.

Not every fortress is made from iron and stone.

Stricken by these thoughts, the shaman barely ducked in time to keep his head. Though they had greatly thinned the ranks of the lesser Scourge, an armored knight had now marched to the fore, great claymore in hand. Perhaps once a great captain of Lordaeron, now a servant of darkness. The Draenei called down a lightning shield around himself, a trio of electric orbs turning endless circles around him.

The captain swung again, and landed a solid blow against the shaman's chainmail, but one of the orbs connected with his blade and leapt down its length to scorch him within. The Draenei followed that with a flame shock, and his axe cleaved into the dead knight's armor. Still smoking, the captain backed away a step, hefted a lesser Scourgling in his other hand, and flung the unlucky minion in his foe's face. The shaman staggered, trying to wrest the scratching, biting menace off his chest. The very moment he did, of course, he was left wide open, and the captain's claymore shoved through his armor.

A second orb of lightning discharged along its bloodstained length as the shaman collapsed. With his last coherent thought, he called on the restorative powers of his Naaru-blessed people, knowing full well that it would be useless if the captain decided to finish his work. Indeed, plated boots clattered on the dead earth as he approached…

…And two more flew by overhead as the Blood Elf leapt into the captain's path, her eyes blazing with magic. Their battle was without flourish or much style, merely the hard clash of hammer and sword, marked only by another burning exorcism that failed to destroy the evil wraith. In a few moments, he knew he would be able to rise again and help end the battle, but he didn't have that long.

Lulled by her foe's lack of originality, the Elf was unconcerned when he parried her overhead swing the same way for the fourth time, and so it came as a shock when he added an extra twist at the end, sudden leverage that lifted her hammer out of her hands to land feet away. His claymore was already high, so he swept it down, inflicting a long, wicked wound on the paladin before she could retreat. Of course, with retreat out of the question, she spent the extra second invoking more power, and the moment after its attack ended, her hammer of wrath blew the Scourge warrior into a hundred fragments.

The minor remainder of undead creatures scattered into the dusty Plaguelands, leaving a shaman of the Alliance staring up at a paladin of the Horde. She was unarmed, and so – making no move to wield his axe – he tentatively began to lift himself from the ground. The paladin smirked and, with a wave of her hand that tried to hide its fresh weakness, struck him with a mental blow, a compelling of repentance that forced the shaman into a trance and sapped the strength from his muscles.

Leaving her hammer in the dust, she drew her rapier again. A lone lightning orb still circled him, and judging from the injury she had received, the charge it held could well be enough to kill her. Of course, with perfect timing, it would never come anywhere near her blade. And she had no time to heal herself; the disciplined Draenei might regain control any second.

Wasn't one death-defying victory enough for the morning? Was gaining another really worth risking her life, not to mention claiming victory at the cost of her recent ally's life? She hesitated.

The shaman groaned, and his head rolled slightly as his trance faded. The paladin raised her sword, aimed for the heart, and thrust.

Then the vines that had slowly grown up around her feet yanked back, pulling her off her feet and causing the stab to miss completely. She barely had time to taste dust before a staff clocked her and all she knew was the peace of unconsciousness. The Tauren wielding it looked up at the Night Elf across the clearing and gave a slight nod, indicating his approval of her entangling root technique. Without a word, for they shared no language, he hefted the Elf in his arms and set off – she would not awaken until they reached the Argent Dawn's nearest outpost.

By the time the shaman was in control of his own body again, he was rocking with the motion of the bear he had been flung over, a bear with moon sigils in its fur. The shapeshifted Night Elf took little notice of his weight, plodding steadily down the path in the opposite direction. There is a kinship among druids, one that does not transcend loyalties but does transcend war, and few are the druids who would trade the death of an ally for the death of an enemy.

Both battles were over, and he had no duty left except to heal and return to the defence of his people. Letting out a long breath, the Draenei closed his eyes and wondered what to think.

_A Note on BElfadins: For all the crazy controversy over Horde paladins and Alliance shamans, and claims of 'butchered lore', I'm surprised more people haven't considered the possibility that having a battalion of holy knights spring up in the midst of the Blood Elves is actually the beginning of their redemption, especially if holy magic can fix that addiction problem of theirs. Sounds like a good plan to me. Makes me wonder if that Naaru might have even meant itself to get caught. So I decided to let a Draenei wonder it too, because, for all their historical inconsistencies, they're still pretty awesome._


End file.
